Korean food, dish by dish

Fifteen dishes worth knowing

• Bibimbap

  비빔밥

  Rice topped with seasoned vegetables, usually egg and often beef, served with gochujang chilli paste to mix through — the name just means mixed rice. Stir it thoroughly before eating; arriving beautiful and being destroyed is the point. The stone-pot version (dolsot) keeps cooking at the table and leaves a prized crust of toasted rice at the bottom.

  • Solo-friendly
  • Vegetarian possible

• Pork belly barbecue

  삼겹살 · samgyeopsal

  Thick slices of unseasoned pork belly grilled at your own table, cut up with scissors, and eaten wrapped in a lettuce or perilla leaf with garlic and ssamjang paste. It is Korea's default night out, ordered by the portion for two or more. One wrap is one bite — building a leaf burrito marks you as new, which nobody minds.

  • Sold to share

• Kimchi stew

  김치찌개 · kimchi-jjigae

  Sour, aged kimchi simmered with pork or tuna and tofu into a bubbling red stew, served with rice. It is everyday food — the dish Koreans miss abroad — and a reliable first stew because the heat is warming rather than punishing. Eaten straight from the boiling pot, so let it stand a minute.

  • 🌶 Spicy
  • Solo-friendly

• Spicy rice cakes

  떡볶이 · tteokbokki

  Cylinders of chewy rice cake in a sweet-hot gochujang sauce, the emblematic street food. The texture — dense and springy — is the point, not a flaw, and the heat varies wildly between stalls. Usually eaten standing at the stall with a skewer of fish cake and a free cup of its broth.

  • 🌶 Spicy
  • Street food

• Korean fried chicken

  치킨 · chikin

  Double-fried for a shatteringly thin crust, sold plain (huraideu) or glazed with sweet-spicy sauce (yangnyeom), and inseparable from beer — the pairing has its own name, chimaek. Ordered whole or half rather than by the piece, late in the evening, and delivered anywhere. Half-and-half of both styles is the standard first order.

  • Sold to share

• Cold buckwheat noodles

  냉면 · naengmyeon

  Thin, elastic buckwheat noodles served in an icy beef broth (mul-naengmyeon) or tossed in chilli sauce (bibim-naengmyeon), often with a half boiled egg and pear. A summer institution and the traditional end to a barbecue meal. Staff will offer scissors to cut the noodles — accept; they are long enough to be a hazard otherwise.

  • Solo-friendly

• Ginseng chicken soup

  삼계탕 · samgyetang

  A whole young chicken stuffed with glutinous rice, ginseng, garlic and jujube, simmered until it collapses off the bone into a milky broth. Not spicy at all — you season it yourself with the salt and pepper provided. Koreans eat it on the hottest days of summer on the fight-heat-with-heat principle, but it is restorative in any season.

  • Solo-friendly

• Black bean noodles

  짜장면 · jjajangmyeon

  Wheat noodles under a glossy black sauce of caramelised chunjang bean paste, onion and pork — Korean-Chinese food, a category of its own with its own restaurants. Mild, savoury and slightly sweet; the safest possible order for a cautious eater. Traditionally the meal for moving day, and the standard delivery order alongside its spicy seafood sibling, jjamppong.

  • Solo-friendly

• Seaweed rice rolls

  김밥 · gimbap

  Rice and fillings — pickled radish, egg, vegetables, ham or tuna — rolled in seaweed and sliced. It looks like sushi and is nothing like it: the rice is seasoned with sesame oil rather than vinegar, and it is picnic food, sold everywhere from specialist counters to convenience stores. The reliable portable meal for a train or a hike.

  • Solo-friendly
  • Vegetarian possible
  • Street food

• Soft tofu stew

  순두부찌개 · sundubu-jjigae

  Silken, unpressed tofu in a fiery red broth with clams or pork, brought to the table still boiling with a raw egg to crack in. The tofu is custard-soft and carries the heat gently. Usually a set meal with rice and side dishes, and one of the easier stews to find in a vegetarian version if you ask about the broth.

  • 🌶 Spicy
  • Solo-friendly
  • Vegetarian possible

• Marinated ribs

  갈비 · galbi

  Beef or pork ribs in a sweet soy-garlic marinade, grilled at the table like samgyeopsal but richer and more of an occasion. The sugar in the marinade burns quickly, so the meat is moved constantly — usually by staff, who will often simply take over the grill. The soup made from the same ribs, galbitang, is its gentle daytime cousin.

  • Sold to share

• Seafood and spring onion pancake

  해물파전 · haemul-pajeon

  A crisp-edged, custardy-centred pancake of spring onions and seafood, torn or cut into pieces and shared. By firm tradition it is what Koreans crave when it rains, eaten with makgeolli rice wine — the pairing you will find at the foot of every hiking trail. Vegetable-only versions are common.

  • Sold to share
  • Vegetarian possible

• Soup with rice

  국밥 · gukbap

  A family of workaday soups — pork (dwaeji-gukbap, Busan's signature), beef, or bean sprout — served over or beside rice, often from pots that never stop simmering. This is what cheap, honest, open-at-dawn Korean food looks like, and the gukbap house is where you eat well alone without a second glance.

  • Solo-friendly

• Sweet filled pancake

  호떡 · hotteok

  A griddled yeast pancake filled with brown sugar, cinnamon and crushed nuts that melt into hot syrup. Winter street food at its best, handed over in a paper cup. The filling emerges close to molten — the first-bite burn is a rite of passage worth avoiding by waiting a minute.

  • Street food

• Spicy stir-fried chicken

  닭갈비 · dakgalbi

  Chicken, cabbage, sweet potato and rice cakes stir-fried in gochujang on a great iron plate set into the table, the speciality of Chuncheon east of Seoul. Eaten in stages: the main event first, then fried rice made in the same pan with the sauce that remains — order the rice; it is the best part.

  • 🌶 Spicy
  • Sold to share

Watch

Short food films from our own channel.

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  Doenjang jjigae — Korea's everyday comfort stew

  This video was generated with AI. Nothing in it was filmed.

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Eating in Korea: the guides

• How to order Korean barbecue without knowing what you are doing
• Korean street food: what to order and how the stalls work
• Drinking in Korea: soju, pouring rules and how to decline politely
• Vegetarian and vegan food in Korea: what to know before you go
• Eating well outside the big cities
• How a Korean traditional market actually works
• Korean cafe culture, which is a bigger deal than you expect
• Korean convenience stores: what to buy and why travellers rely on them

Places to eat

Restaurants from the Korea Tourism Organization’s catalogue.